Digital Commons Network^™

Alleged Insanity: Frank Johnson Sr., Racial Injustice, And The Failure Of The Mental Health Care System In South Carolina, Jonathon P. Johnson

Senior Theses

This thesis is about Frank Johnson Sr. and the circumstances that led to his downfall as a farmer and father of six, to his tragic death in the isolation of a racially segregated mental institution 18 miles away from his home. Using his life and incarceration at the South Carolina State Park mental health facility, I argue that racial injustice contributed to his tragic death and the woefully inadequate treatment thousands of African Americans in South Carolina received during Jim Crow. Additionally, I argue that the tragic circumstances around my great grandfather’s institutionalization and death were part of an enduring …

Visual Word Recognition By Arab Esl Learners: Phonological Versus Orthographic Consonantal Influence On Vowels, Raed A. Alguthami

Theses and Dissertations

The current study is on second language acquisition (SLA), and the focus is on the process of visual word recognition in English by Arab learners of English as a second language (ESL). Arab ESL learners have poor performance in their visual word recognition in English, which has been explicated in terms of their poor spelling knowledge of English words. The goal of the current study was to show that Arab ESL learners' visual word recognition in English is also influenced by properties of English influencing American English (AE) native speakers’ visual word recognition.

In chapter 3, it is hypothesized that, …

The Cultural Politics Of Affective Bureaucracy In Service Delivery To North Korean Refugees In South Korea, Seo Yeon Park

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the affective dimensions and intersecting politics of service operations for North Koreans, focusing on semi-government institutions, Hana Centers in two different regions of South Korea. It probes into how bureaucratic service institutions for North Koreans operate on the ground using affect-laden languages and practices in creating a specific type of clientele subjectivity. This study also points out how the state bureaucracies identifying themselves as “practical” and “neutral” agencies reveal contradictory and fragmented governing which is antithetical to how the state institutions are imagined. There are underlying politics working in the realm of a so-called neutral service agency, …

A Matter Of "Vicious Habits": Civil War Families Under The Strain Of War, R. Kyle Bjornson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the long term consequences of spatial and temporal distance on marriages during the Civil War. The absence of male labor created by enlistment in the Union Army stretched women to their economic limits while physical and emotional separation created opportunities for infidelity for both husbands and wives. Central to this narrative is mid-nineteenth-century ideas about manhood. The war offered a confirmation of male adulthood, but also required men to abandon the duties to home that were no less fundamental to the ideal of male maturity. Recent scholarship on veterans’ disabilities, including mental illness and substance abuse, show …

21st Century Choral Performance Practice: Presenting The Mash-Up With Practical Applications, Justin Xavier Carteret

Theses and Dissertations

Recent paradigm shifts in music production have generated a newly recognized texture formed by blending two or more pre-existent and pre-recorded songs together. Originating in pop culture, mash-ups often sample from genres and cultures otherwise not typically associated. This new form requires formal definition, codification, and application. Developments in digital coding and dissemination of the latter twentieth century expanded the diapason of music composition, revealing the mash-up as a naturally occurring product of harmonic evolution. A description of the computer software Audacity and its capabilities depicts an uncomplicated aural-based method for composition which generated the early mash-ups of the 2000’s. …

A Comprehensive Examination Of The Saxophone Chamber Music Of John Fitz Rogers, Gabriel Michael Anthony Fadale

Theses and Dissertations

The body of classical saxophone chamber repertoire is an ever-evolving collection of music. Presently, many contemporary composers endeavor to write for the saxophone, some more successfully than others. Modern musical language can be overly obtuse and convoluted with avant-garde techniques and sounds that, when performed, may cause an emotional and intellectual disconnect between the performer and the audience. When new pieces are composed that are of high quality and use language that is accessible to performers and audiences alike, it is important for saxophonists to be aware of these compositions and the composers creating them. This document presents the music …

G.I. Joe V. Jim Crow: Legal Battles Over Off-Base School Segregation Of Military Children In The American South, 1962-1964, Randall George Owens

Theses and Dissertations

Between 1962 and 1964, the U.S. Justice Department, African American military members stationed on southern military bases, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed six federal civil suits to end off-base segregation of military children in public schools. These cases took place in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia. Plaintiffs sought to bring civilian cities near federal military bases into compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown decision. The presence of federal military bases, which had been integrated since a 1948 Executive Order issued by President Harry S. Truman, provided leverage against ongoing …

Music Majors And Meditation Practice: A Phenomenological Study, Travis N. Baird

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine undergraduate and graduate music majors’ perceived experiences while learning and practicing a meditation technique. Guiding research questions included: 1) How did meditation practice alter participants’ thoughts related to music performance? 2) How did meditation practice influence participants’ perceived Music Performance Anxiety (MPA) symptoms? 3) What aspects of meditation practice did participants find most/least helpful in perceived reduction of negative MPA symptoms? 4) How did meditation practice influence post-performance self-evaluation? 5) What influence does meditation practice have on participants during performance preparation? Six music majors were selected as participants and data was …

Enslaved Labor In The Gang And Task Systems: A Case Study In Comparative Bioarchaeology Of Commingled Remains, William D. Stevens

Theses and Dissertations

This study designs and tests an approach intended to confront one of the major problems faced within biological anthropology, the commingling or mixing of human skeletal remains. The first goal of the study is to implement an approach to sorting mixed human remains in order that they can be made amenable to comparative study. Bioarchaeologists depend on an array of measures, preserved in the human skeleton, to assess the lifestyles and identity of past human groups. As many of these measures are preserved within the morphology of different bones, it is imperative that the association and context of remains are …

A History Of The Plagal-Amen Cadence, Jason Terry

Theses and Dissertations

Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, most hymns in the Anglo-American tradition ended with the congregation singing amen following the original stanzas, almost always framed within a plagal cadence. Helping this tradition take root was Hymns Ancient & Modern (1861), an Anglican hymnal that published the “amen” cadence after every modern hymn. This practice was heavily adopted among other denominational hymnals throughout England and the United States, peaking around the turn of the century. By the middle of the twentieth century, a decline in the number of hymnals including this cadence was noticeable; however, it would take until the end of …

Defining And Displaying Gallo: Language And Ideology In Upper Brittany, France, Sandra Keller

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines discourse practices in and about Gallo, a marginalized Romance language of Upper Brittany, France. Specifically, it explores how various Gallo social actors (advocates, performers, teachers and students) defined, labeled and displayed Gallo, as they constructed it as a language capable of participating in modernity, producing local authority, and forging links with loved people and places.

Gallo was popularly imagined as part of a rural past and dismissed as a “deformation” of French, unlike the Breton language, which stood as a salient emblem of Brittany’s cultural distinctiveness. This dissertation elucidates the ideological and everyday consequences of using this …

Like I Said, Matthew Mossman

Theses and Dissertations

Like I Said is a collection of memoir essays spanning the author’s life from his earliest memories to the present day. Topics touched on include but are not limited to: the struggle of being raised as an undiagnosed sufferer of ADHD, the cultural/familial dynamics at work in rural southeast Missouri, the author’s trial with hitting puberty and finding religion in the same year, and the ongoing shifts in the Mossman family’s relational dynamics in the years since the author’s mother was first diagnosed with breast cancer.

Structurally, the text takes inspiration from the “lyric essay,” a subgenre of creative nonfiction …

Cut Purses And Poisoned Paintings: Resisting Gender Objectification, Meredith N. Will

Theses and Dissertations

The early modern English stage often portrays gender as polarized, creating an unwelcoming atmosphere toward characters who act exhibit characteristics from both male and female genders. Moll Cutpurse from Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton’s The Roaring Girl and Alice of Arden of Faversham resist early modern gender boundaries, conflating masculine and feminine attributes as they use objects to navigate their respective social spaces. Critics often describe Moll as a transvestite due to her fashion choice to wear a codpiece, along with her exaggerated, boisterous masculine behavior; however, she consistently defends her biological sex, implicating herself within her arguments concerning female …

Post-Genre: Understanding The Classical-Jazz Hybrid Of Third Stream Music Through The Guitar Works Of Frederic Hand, Ralph Towner, And Ken Hatfield, Andrew Jurik

Theses and Dissertations

Gunther Schuller coined the term “third stream” in 1957 as a reference for a style of music that blends the practices of both the classical and the jazz traditions. Despite a fair critical reception and the efforts of like-minded musicians and composers, third stream as a musical concept failed to achieve much commercial success, and by the 1970s it was considered a passing modernist fad. Nonetheless, the fusion of classical and popular musical genres that embodies spirit of third stream thrives today, although most practitioners tend to neglect the term itself. The purpose of this document is to examine the …

Lillian Smith, Richard Wright, And Walker Percy's Ontological Vision: Gnosticism, Cartesian Dualism, And The Split Of The Southern Self, Thomas R. Cody

Theses and Dissertations

With the advent of the New Southern Studies and its critiques of Southern Exceptionalism, the critic of Southern Literature has felt the necessity to both look within and outside the American South to re-contextualize the parameters of the study in order to avoid the pitfalls of totalizing and whitewashed narratives it is accused of perpetrating. As Matthew Lassiter and Joseph Crespino note in their study The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism, such a shift may be accomplished through the consideration of more salient measures of identity and belonging, such as religion, class, and gender. In this paper, I examine how religious …

Base Rates Of Cognitive And Academic Weaknesses, Allison L. Stafford

Theses and Dissertations

The identification of learning disabilities is critical for receiving intervention services; however, special education eligibility criteria often varies across districts, resulting in large variations in identification rates. (Hallahan, Keller, & Ball, 1986; Scruggs & Mastropieri, 2002; Reschly & Hosp, 2004; Maki, Floyd & Roberson, 2015). A new method for identifying learning disabilities, patterns of strengths and weaknesses (PSW), has risen in popularity as a method for assessing and informing interventions for students with learning disabilities. Despite the growing popularity of PSW approaches, little is known about the prevalence of cognitive and academic weaknesses in the population (Miciak, Fletcher, Stuebing, Vaughn, …

Metafiction In Mourning: The Intersections Of Gender Performance And Postdictatorial Memory In Novels By Luisa Valenzuela, Clarice Lispector, And Diamela Eltit, Jennifer L. Slobodian

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to build on two major theoretical fields, feminism and postdictatorial memory, in the context of Latin American women’s writing. The development of Latin American feminism has run concurrently with the broader feminist movements of the 20th century, but has been shaped by the particularities and diversity of the region. Specific concerns relating to postcoloniality, religion, and nation have caused theorists like Debra A. Castillo to discuss Latin American feminism on its own, focusing on the inherent privileging of praxis over theory and the necessary pastiche of local and international theories. The development of Latin …

The Last Gentlemen: Southern Conservative Superfluity And The Work Of William Alexander Percy, Walker Percy, And Peter Taylor, William Matthew Simmons

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation proposes that a robust, serious treatment of Southern conservatism can provide readers with effective ways to interpret works of Southern literature. Southern writers have always dealt with issues we might identify as “conservative,” and scholars have shown us three typical ways of Southern writers approaching conservatism. First, some writers have treated conservatism as one of many characteristics of the South; their treatments of conservatism have been part of their descriptive project. Other writers have used conservatism for more didactic, political purposes, whether that be showing the South’s sins or arguing that the South’s conservative character makes it a …

Creating And Implementing Community-Based Performance Programs: A Guide For The Applied Studio Teacher, Lauren Watkins

Theses and Dissertations

As performers, many professionals in the fields of chamber music and orchestral playing participate in educational and community programming. In an effort to help graduates meet these new challenges, 21st century music schools are creating diverse performance and education experiences for their students to gain skills for success beyond graduation. Until recently, not many music schools offered opportunities for students to learn and develop skills in the area of community programming. In the current music school curriculum, there exists a largely untapped potential for applied teachers to create and institute community performance-based programs for their students. Participation in these programs …

Being Strategic: Black Legislative Representation In The Republican-Controlled South Carolina House Of Representatives, Willie James Black

Theses and Dissertations

Under what circumstances, can descriptive representatives produce a representation, which may not be merely descriptive, but still substantive in nature? In other words, do descriptive representatives provide representation that produces salient black constituency policies, yet not be strictly black interest substantive policies? Do these black Democrats still “substantively represent” their black constituents and if so, to what extent? More importantly, what legislative actions do they undertake to represent their black constituents? Moreover, can these black Democratic legislators form strategic alliances successfully to prevent passage of policies detrimental to the interest of their black constituency? Can they form alliances to enhance …

Yiddish And Relation To The German Dialects, Bryan Witmore

Theses and Dissertations

In an attempt to balance the complex, multi-component nature of Yiddish with its more homogenous speech community – Ashekenazic Jews –Yiddishists have proposed definitions for the Yiddish language that cannot be considered linguistic in nature. Instead, Yiddish is often seen as a cultural phenomenon. Closely related to the issue of what Yiddish is, is how Yiddish came about. This paper addresses these two issues by comparing Yiddish to German dialects in an attempt to demonstrate Yiddish’s linguistic proximity with German and also to approach a hypothesis for the origins of Yiddish.

Remembering Salinger's Franny And Zooey Through Pari And The Royal Tenenbaums, Taraneh Zohadi

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores the ways in which Mehrjui’s Pari and Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums borrow from Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. My argument is that Salinger and the concepts he introduced in the book are remembered through both films. Being a product of their historical/cultural contexts, The Royal Tenenbaums embraces the aesthetics of the text and Pari converses with the spiritual aspect of the main text. Anderson’s film captures the United States’ preoccupation consumerism and the hollowness at turn of the twenty-first century, while Pari explores the angst and despair in the post Iran-Iraq war context of the film’s release, feelings …

Teresa Carreno: Pianist, Composer And Pedagogue. Her Life And Work From The Perspective Of Virtuoso Piano Playing At The End Of The 19th Century, Claudio Olivera

Theses and Dissertations

Teresa Carreño (1853 – 1917) was the first Venezuelan artist to achieve international recognition. As a child prodigy, she impressed pianists such as Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and quickly became a phenomenon in the United States. As an acclaimed pianist, the sheer power of her performances earned her the title of Valkyrie of the piano, and she had an extremely active performing career until months before her death.

Throughout her life, she interacted with the most important musical personalities of the time, including Franz Liszt and Anton Rubinstein, among many others. She was also a talented singer, as Gioaccino Rossini personally …

Ecohydrology And Groundwater Dynamics In A Salt Marsh Island, Andrea L. H. Hughes

Theses and Dissertations

Tidal salt marshes are extraordinarily productive and valuable ecosystems that provide via groundwater a not insignificant portion of coastal solute and nutrient budgets. Among the many goods and services they provide are habitat for diverse wildlife, protection for coastal communities during storms, and protection for coastal surface waters by filtering anthropogenic pollutants. One threat to the health of tidal salt marshes along the East Coast have been episodes of Acute Marsh Dieback (AMD) from 1999 to 2001. Dieback was observed at North Inlet salt marsh from 2000 to 2001. Since salt marsh hydrology is dominated by the local tidal regime, …

Hiv-1 Transgenic Rat: Selective Alterations In Motivation And Histological Examination Of Medium Spiny Neurons Of The Nucleus Accumbens, Michael N. Cranston

Theses and Dissertations

Motivational alterations in HIV-1+ individuals are associated with decreased performance on tasks involving frontal-subcortical circuitry and the nucleus accumbens. In the present study, the HIV-1 transgenic (Tg) rat was used to assess long-term HIV-1 viral protein exposure on motivated behavior using activity chambers (40x40cm) and voluntary wheel running. Adult ovariectomized female HIV-1 Tg animals (n=21) to F344 controls (n=26) were pair-housed under a 12:12 light/dark cycle. Voluntary running was measured with 34 cm-diameter running wheels for ~60 minutes/day for 3 ½ months. There were no significant differences between HIV-1 Tg and F344 control rats in voluntary wheel running during the …

An Analysis Of Selected Art Songs For High Voice By Adolphus Hailstork, A Performer's Guide, Angela Renee Blalock

Theses and Dissertations

Adolphus Hailstork, one of the best-known African American composers of the latter half of the twentieth century, is an innovator of American art song literature. Hailstork issignificantly recognized as a composer of instrumental genres, and his songs represent an important contribution to this genre, his overall output, and are currently not well known. Songs of Love and Justice (1992) is a song cycle for voice and piano set to the writings of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. The texts are not poetic, and relate to a period of unrest in the United States of America referred to as …

Sifting Through The Sand: Adaptive Flexibility In The Middle Archaic Occupations Of The Sandhills Province Of South Carolina, Audrey Rachel Dawson

Theses and Dissertations

Based on a sample of Coastal Plain Middle Archaic sites in addition to lithic debitage data from three Morrow Mountain (7,500-5,500 BP) occupation clusters at the Three Springs site (38RD837/841/842/844), Richland County, South Carolina, this dissertation explores the applicability of a model of Adaptive Flexibility to the Morrow Mountain occupations of the South Carolina Sandhills Province. The model of Adaptive Flexibility was developed to explain the redundant, low-density scatters of lithic debitage and generalized, expedient tools made of locally available raw materials that characterize the Middle Archaic, specifically Morrow Mountain, archaeological record of the South Carolina Piedmont. Multiple lines of …

A Study Of Material Diversity In The Carolina Colony: Silver Bluff, Yaughan, Curriboo, And Middleburg Plantations, Brandy Joy

Theses and Dissertations

The Carolina Backcountry is a temporally and geographically defined area reaching westward from the Carolina Lowcountry and its center, Charleston. For roughly a one hundred year span between the late seventeenth century and late eighteenth century it was a frontier and contact zone for colonists and indigenous groups. The Backcountry has sometimes been considered culturally and socially retarded, lacking the material refinement found in the colonial center of Lowcountry Charleston, South Carolina. Often landed estates in the eighteenth century Carolina Backcountry have been portrayed as one side of a dichotomy between refinement and local, rural folk craft traditions. I propose …

Selective Behavioral Alterations In The Hiv-1 Transgenic Rat: Implications For Diagnosis Of Pediatric Hiv-1, Kristen A. Mclaurin

Theses and Dissertations

Since the advent of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART), pediatric HIV-1 (PHIV) has evolved from a fatal disease to a chronic disease with children perinatally infected with HIV-1 surviving into adulthood. The HIV-1 transgenic (Tg) rat, which expresses 7 of the 9 HIV-1 genes constitutively throughout development, was used to investigate the early development of chronic neurological impairment in PHIV. Male and female Fischer HIV-1 Tg and F344N control rats, sampled from 35 litters, were repeatedly assessed during early development using multiple experimental paradigms, including somatic growth, locomotor activity, cross-modal prepulse inhibition (PPI) and gap-prepulse inhibition (gap-PPI). A rightward shift towards …

The Electric Marimba: A Study Of Selected Works For Marimba With Electronic Effect, Brett Bernard Landry

Theses and Dissertations

Over the course of the last century, literature for the solo marimba has been greatly expanded by a wide variety of composers to include nearly every contemporary style and genre. One such area of expansion is the use of electronic effect, defined as the augmentation of the acoustic marimba using looping and delay technologies in live performance. This study illuminates the history of electronic effect technology and briefly describes the technological options employed in the genre of marimba with electronic effect. Concepts specific to the genre are also addressed; specifically, the terminology of rhythmic delay and harmonic delay. To introduce …